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DUNE: For Want of Little Makers


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2 hours ago, Leofric said:

I was never under the impression that Fremen were on the edge of starvation or suffering from deprivation, except for those being abused by the Harkonen near the main city

 

2 hours ago, Leofric said:

their daily conditioning and culture of discipline gave them a strong basis for being exceptional soldiers.

That's it exactly.  Which is what makes them superior to the Sardaukar or the imperial guard.  Plus, you know, they know the territory! Sorry. Ah hem.  Just couldn't resist a Music Man call out.  :)

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Thinking more and more about the concept that the most brutal are the most successful military.

Again, it seems to me that works only when they -- like the Sardauker -- aren't confronted by far lesser trained and supplied sorts.  Again, it's the more equal two military groups are, the worse the blood bath.  Again, for example, what happened between those armies in the US War of the Rebellion.  They were composed of soldiers at least as brave as each other, each, in their own way of men as tough and deprived or not deprived (officers, different on both sides from rank and file).  Flat out fighting, hand-to-hand, sometimes one army failed and ran, and sometimes the other one did. But when neither failed and ran, the blood was up to the hips.  And often, looking at the casualties, it was a draw.  We see the same in the battles of the Roman civil wars, and so on.

But what then made the difference on the field of the Battle of Vienna 1683?  The Ottomans and Janissaries had everything they needed to take the city, including terrific leadership and cannon, yet .... with the arrival of King John III Sobieski, and his cavalry, the Polish winged Hussars, the Ottoman forces went to pieces. So what was the underlying cause here?  The numbers of the opposing numbers were similar. 

Mostly it looks like a cooperative coalition of attack among Sobieski's forces and the Austrian-German forces.  (Though still, most of the Ottoman army managed to escape, their casualties were much greater.

Then, you know WWI and the trench warfare.  It didn't matter how brutal any one or group was.  The very set-up of trench warfare was lose-lose for everyone.  We know the numbers there.  :crying:

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I saw it yesterday at the theatre. I have very mixed feelings.

 

On one hand, what is shot is shot very beautifully. The acting and dialogue are good. You get a real feel for both Caladan and Arrakis. 

Spoiler

 

On the other hand, the movie really feels truncated. More like a series pilot than a movie, lacking a proper climax. I'm of the opinion that a novel or a film should be able to stand on their own without requiring sequels, and this movie definitely fails on this regard. If the second part never gets made (as I fear might happen), I think it will feel extremely pointless.

Despite having two hours to explore the first half of the movie, the whole 'traitor amongst us' subplot from the book is completely excised, and as a result neither Thufir Hawat nor Doctor Yueh have very much to do (it feels like the Harkonnen attack happens on their second night in Arrakis). Hawat could have simply been melded with Haleck and it wouldn't have mattered much. His iconic 'You're sitting with your back to the door' scene is given to Haleck, and the word 'Mentat' is never used in the film.  

I also felt the Harkonnens were poorly served as a result of us spending very little time in Giedi Prime and the lack of Feyd Rautha. Peter de Vries is never mentioned by name (though the character is there). He has this slightly strange scene where he visits Salusa Secundus to arrange the lease of three battalions of Sardaukar, which seems very unnecessary, as the Emperor has already ordained it and the exorbitant expense of space travel has been established previously in the movie. It's fun to see Salusa Secundus, though. 

The tooth scene was slightly strange. The Baron is leaning straight over the Duke when it happens but somehow manages to survive regardless (though all the people in the same room who were further away die instantly). I think it was better handled in the book.

I reckon one of the reasons the book was considered unfilmable is the sheer lack of exposition you need to make it work properly. Though a valiant attempt is made to integrate it into the story as much as possible so that it doesn't feel like the infodump it is, I did find it slightly boring sometimes.

I had no problem with the Fremen being good warriors. They're slightly downplayed from the book (no longer capable of murdering a squad of Sardaukar with no casualties).

 

 

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18 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I made a whole separate spoiler thread for the movie, only one person noticed.

I just thought it was a safe space for you and Arakis to continue your lovely banter :P

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On 9/26/2021 at 11:58 PM, Zorral said:

That's it exactly.  Which is what makes them superior to the Sardaukar or the imperial guard.  Plus, you know, they know the territory! Sorry. Ah hem.  Just couldn't resist a Music Man call out.  :)

I can't remember, but is their culture's proximity to the consciousness-expanding Spice also a contributing factor to their fighting prowess? 

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4 hours ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

I can't remember, but is their culture's proximity to the consciousness-expanding Spice also a contributing factor to their fighting prowess? 

I don't recall that being suggested in the first novel, which is generally speaking the only one that I've re-read so often I wore out two copies.  Did re-read the next two a few times, but the following ones, I ended up glancing through, at best, because, as mentioned previously, Herbert was a much better story teller when he was telling stories, than blowharding a philosopher. It might be mentioned in those books. Anybody else?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Villeneuve on Dune. [paywall] It's interesting this piece is written by Helen MacDonald, author of H Is For Hawk.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/magazine/dune-denis-villeneuve.html

Five particular take-aways:

1)

Quote

...  (“I’m not sure if he was interested to adapt ‘Dune’ more than to do a fantastic Jodorowsky movie,” Villeneuve mused. “I don’t know if he was really interested by ‘Dune.’ And Lynch, it’s a bit the same way, I think, you know?”) Villeneuve doesn’t think he’s the only person who could have done “Dune” justice, but for him, he said, it was “about the book, the book, the book.” ...

2)

Quote

... Villeneuve was 14 when he first saw the book, an edition with an arresting cover in the small library near his school in Trois-Rivières, Quebec: the face of a dark-skinned man with piercing blue eyes against a remote desert background. It was beautiful, he told me, lifting a copy with the same cover from his desk. He has kept it through the years, and is using it to write the second movie (“Dune” is a famously complex novel, and Villeneuve only agreed to adapt it if it could be broken into two films). ...

3)

Quote

 ... Villeneuve has dreamed of making “Dune” since he was a teenager; he tried to make his movie as “close to the dream as possible, and it was very difficult, because the dreams of a teenager are very totalitarian. I was not expecting it would be so difficult to please that guy!” ...

4)

Quote

 ... Villeneuve wanted to foreground the story’s women, particularly Lady Jessica, “a very complex character — she has multiple agendas.” As Paul’s mother, a duke’s partner and a member of the ancient and mysterious female order of the Bene Gesserit — the most significant power in the story — she is “the architect, the thinker, the reason why this novel exists,” Villeneuve told me, adding: “She is the one who is the teacher. She is the guide, she’s the one with the inspiration.” ...

#5 particularly struck me --

5)  

Quote

... Villeneuve’s insistence on filming in real-world environments was shaped by his early work as a documentarian. ...

 

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To this day my brain boggles that SyFy made the Dune mini-series without shooting anything - even background plates - in a real desert. Not even driving 4 hours out of Los Angeles like Star Trek does whenever they want to do something even vaguely desert-like. It was all in the studio like a 1960s episode of Doctor Who, or a few CGI shots when their CGI team was really not up to it.

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2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Not even driving 4 hours out of Los Angeles

Even that was too expensive for the cheapskating that was the channel method of operation? Pay the production companies so little they couldn't afford to hire the trucks etc.?

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On 9/27/2021 at 10:39 AM, polishgenius said:

I made a whole separate spoiler thread for the movie, only one person noticed.

You spoiled Europeans and your early release dates!!!!

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2 hours ago, Werthead said:

To this day my brain boggles that SyFy made the Dune mini-series without shooting anything - even background plates - in a real desert.

I think it worked for the production. Gave it all an unreal quality that made the VFX easier to sell, given their limited budget and tech.

 

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